The Resurrected One

If those seven words of personal identification from John's gospel were listed in order of significance instead of as they appear in the text, it would be hard not to put number five as number one.  While each one of these self-identifying words of Jesus are powerful, number five is full and running over.  In John 11:25 this super word appears as Jesus says about Himself, "I am the resurrection and the life."  What is not surprising is that this word comes at the about to be empty tomb of Lazarus.  This friend of Jesus had been in the tomb for four days when Jesus arrived.  This power filled word of Jesus comes in response to the "if only You had come earlier" lament of Martha.  (John 11:17-22)   

In a place of grief and mourning, in a place filled with flowing tears, and in a place where Jesus was reproached for not doing better, He speaks a word which splits the heavens and tore the power of death apart.  "I am the resurrection and the life."  What is strange is that it is a word hardly preached from the pulpit except on Easter Sunday and in services at the cemetery, and even then, it is often watered down by making it a symbolic word conveying some truth other than the reality that death does not have the last word.   

Without the resurrection the gospel is a collection of empty religious platitudes.  It is not an optional part of the message of Jesus, but the essential part.  Early on there were those in the church who preached a false gospel denying the resurrection which prompted the Apostle Paul to write, "If there is no resurrection from the dead, then Christ has not been raised...If Christ has not been raised, you faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have died in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died."  (I Corinthians 15:13, 17-20).   The One who said, "I am the resurrection and the life" was raised from the dead and now and forever lives and because He lives, so shall we.  Hallelujah!